


To Feel Less

by quicksparrows



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-23 03:08:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13181103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksparrows/pseuds/quicksparrows
Summary: Somehow, it sticks out to Kylo Ren that Rey hadn't maimed him out of cruelty.





	To Feel Less

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like this movie could have benefited from taking place over weeks instead of like, 18 hours. For your sanity, pretend that it did.

.

 

The winds are strong. He still can't see where she is, but he can feel the wind on his own skin as surely as he can see it whip her hair around. Wispy little strands of mud-brown, escaping the confines of her ponytails. One catches across her lips and she reaches to brush it away. She flashes an odd little smile, caught off-guard by his gaze.

"It's windy there," he says. "Isn't it?"

"Yes. So?"

He just lets that linger, unsure of where to bring small talk or observation. His silence lingers long enough that she gives a short, unkind stab of laughter. 

"Congratulations, Kylo Ren, you've reduced Luke Skywalker's location to planets that experience _wind!_ "

That's not what he meant, and it seems like the wind makes her grouchy, but that could be the cold clinging to her clothes and giving rosiness to her cheeks. It's easier to think about that than dwell on how he has made her day worse by merely existing in her psychic periphery. It's irritating. He has a lot to do, or he usually would, if the entirety of the First Order weren't fixated on dogging the Resistance in history's most agonizingly slow march to death. 

He doesn't care if she's bothered by him.

 

⁌⚔⁍

 

She hasn't been crying. Kylo Ren wishes she were, that being forced to peer into her mind would grant him some reason to believe her weaker than he'd initially thought. Wouldn't that be comforting, to see her curled up and sobbing for a man she hadn't really gotten to know? Wouldn't his place in the world feel that much more secure, if she weren't his equal after all? It would feel so much better to feel vindicated.

Instead, when their connection tunes them into each other and his attention narrows into what he can see of hers, she lifts her chin and gets that little purse to her lips and she says:

"Have you been crying?"

"No," he says. There's an involuntary bristle to his own voice.

"Well, you look it."

It's an easy wound to rub, and this scavenger girl plucked from the desert sands, she's an expert in those kinds of abrasives. Kylo Ren inhales, rules himself calm, but even the process of calming himself feels that much more tense and uncomfortable. 

He knows he's slept poorly. He knows he's got dark circles under his eyes, a sallowness to his skin. He knows he's been wavering on the edge of that kind of _pathetic_ weakness for days now, and it had felt worse to indulge when he'd hoped it would have been relieving, and even shattering the paneling on the walls hadn't made a difference––

"Clearly you aren't as heartless as I thought," she says.

That, too, feels like an insult.

He cares a great deal when he's bothered by her.

 

⁌⚔⁍

 

"Would you feel less, if you could?" she asks him.

Maybe. It would be nice not to feel right now. His place in the Order is disrupted, and his father is dead. She sees that in the lines of his face, and he knows it as surely as he does when he looks at his own reflection. He thought maybe she felt that in her own experiences –– she hadn't driven her parents away, she hadn't asked for this any more than he did. (Or maybe that he felt he did.) Just like him, she'd hoped she had some worth, hadn't she? And just like him, she would need to come to the conclusion that worth is made, not given.

She'll understand someday. Soon, likely.

For now, the question: would he feel less?

"Perhaps," he says. "I am only held back by that kind of sentimentality. Would you?"

"Maybe," she says. "I think I'd like to not feel sometimes. It's paralyzing."

Paralyzing? That gives him pause. Is that what stopped her from killing him in the snow? She could have killed him, left him with more than just a mark. If it had been Snoke standing over him, Kylo would have understood the wound –– it might have even been deeper, deep enough that no amount of synth skin and stitching could avoid a scar.

Snoke would have done it to teach him something. A cruel but necessary lesson. Kylo Ren isn't always sure of his own greatness, but he is sure of his own intelligence, and he's smart enough to know that Snoke keeps him around for his potential, not because he is an easy person to keep. Snoke isn't about to give up on an investment, either, not when he's put so many years into it, but Snoke would wound him. Badly, if it seemed necessary.

Somehow, it sticks out to Kylo Ren that Rey hadn't done it out of cruelty.

Had she been paralyzed, too ridden with feelings to do away with him, even when she'd had him on his back before her? Had the deluge of emotions stayed her hand? Was it a misplaced compassion? A fear of her own strength? Some asinine cliché, like killing him would make her just like him?

"If it were possible to take your pain from you, I would," Kylo says. "Since you don't seem interested in saving yourself, maybe I could do it for you. Erase everything that you're holding on to. You'd be stronger for it."

She pauses.

"Saving myself?"

"They're all going to die," he says. "Even if the First Order left you alive at first, you'd have no choice but to join us or perish."

"Then I'll keep my feelings, thank you," she says. "I rather enjoy being a person."

"Are you suggesting I'm not?"

She makes a noise, cool and disaffected, and then she's gone.

 

⁌⚔⁍

 

Wherever she is, if she's really with Skywalker, then she can't be very happy about it. She seems distraught, even. Maybe he isn't giving her what she wants. Her training must not be going well. Kylo isn't surprised, not in the least. This is because Kylo knows how that is, to be frustrated. As a man, he can acknowledge that he was even cruel to his uncle as a boy, bitter and unhappy. Luke Skywalker does not always have patience for irreverence.

Still, his boyhood anger had nothing on the cruelties his uncle had delivered to him in return.

Funny how he has memories for every feeling she wears on her skin.

"Training not going well?" he asks. 

"I was thinking about what you said," she says. "I wouldn't want to feel less at all. In fact, I would like to feel more –– I don't want to become cold and calculating like you. So I don't know if you were suggesting you had some Force powers of the sort, but I would never let you take my pain from me."

He says nothing, so she says: "That's selfish, to take someone's pain. Is there any part of you that isn't selfish?"

He wishes he had his mask, but it is shattered in pieces, so all he can do is rule his mouth into a hard line and nod. Slowly, carefully, eyes fixed on hers. Her brown eyes already seem to tremble with the very emotion she clings to. Kylo has no power to take it away.

"You have to understand," he says. "Everything you feel, I've felt before. My parents abandoned me too."

"Your parents _love_ you," she says. He can see her working herself up, her fists balling, her teeth flashing. Almost sharply: "We're not the same, Ben, not in the slightest. You _ran_ from your parents."

And there's his temper, too:

"Do you think I felt _loved_ when they sent me away?"

Her chest rises and falls in deep, hard rolls. She raises her fists like she could strike him, pound on his chest until he gives up whatever ruse she believes him to be telling, but she doesn't move. Neither does he. He just watches her, a tension in his entire body, a thought in his mind that she needs to excise the festering, psychological wounds that are only holding her back.

"Like training with Luke Skywalker is such a terrible fate," she snaps.

"You're the one in a bad mood about it," he says. "And I know why. If anyone in this galaxy knows what it's like to be trained by Luke Skywalker, to be burdened with bringing the Jedi back to power, don't you think it's me?"

Rey pulls away again. She doesn't want to talk. That's okay, Kylo Ren tells himself. He doesn't really want to talk, either.

He wants to smash every piece of furniture in his room.

 

⁌⚔⁍

 

Dawn comes early. He dresses somewhat inefficiently for a man constantly on the cusp of being Force-stalked by a girl, buttoning his tunic between bites of granola bar, lingering in the refresher longer than necessary, but such is life. Better than than laying in bed. 

"Good morning," she says, not looking at him. It's about the friendliest thing she's said to him, and she still sounds less than pleased to be injected into his life.

He gives a little rumble in response. He also thinks about that hard little bow to her mouth sometimes, the way she purses her lips when she's angry. The way her skinny frame tenses up and her chin lifts and the fury just radiates off her, warm in a way no one can understand but him. He knows how it feels. It's comforting, in the sickest of ways. He knows it isn't normal but it's the closest thing he understands.

It feels a little alarming that she would be nice to him. He hasn't been nice to her.

He wonders if she just likes the moral high ground.

"Better today?" he asks.

"Yes, thank you," she says, curtly. She's still upset, but maybe she's starting to get it, even if pride holds her back. He can tell.

"You'll understand him soon enough," Kylo tells her.

"Will I?" she asks.

It's a genuine question. It even seems a little sad, like she doesn't want to understand him, but she's too tired to argue.

"I think so," he says.

He _hopes_ so.


End file.
